Unspecified felidball

Egads, these must be the best night photos my little camera's ever managed to take!

Behold the super sculpey original (just baked) of Felidball.

Felidball is my latest crafty ploy to produce numbers of things that can be sold for what they're worth, that people will actually be able to afford.

Observe the rounded ears, short muzzle, and long fuzzy tail. Depending on how this is painted, it could become: a tiger (orange or white), a leopard, a panther, a jaguar, a snow leopard, a clouded leopard, a puma.. It could probably get away with being a cheetah or a lioness. It could even be painted with a made-up colour pattern.

That's about the widest range of animals people like that can come from a single basic shape that I could come up with.

So this sculpey original will be used to make a silicone (Ultrasil) mould, from which will be cast polyurethane resin (Supercast) copies. Have never done this before, hope it will work. The nice chap in the shop explained the process to me very patiently. You should go and buy things from him. Barnes is the name of the shop, it's at 53 King Street Newtown (that's in Sydney, by the way), and is not in the yellow pages under Artists' Supplies, though it may be under Special Effects or Movie Industry supplies or something, coz they're serious sculpting people. Here's their website: [link] .

Whee, I'm babbling on, I think I must be trying to avoid doing something else.

Also, the substances one uses to make moulds and casts appear to be nasty and toxic. I don't want to die! But I don't want not to make more felidballs either. So I guess I will just have to not get them on my hands or inhale the vapours and wear goggles and gloves and gas-masks... Poo, I hate dangerous art materials!

More felidballs soon!

It took about 2 hours to make this original, which means one day when I sell him he will be worth at least $40, so there.